![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you."
My Japanese classes in Tokyo were a pretty mixed bunch. But one term the class split pretty much into assorted-white-westerners (American, Australian, a Brit and me) and Koreans (a 40ish man, a 30ish man and a 20ish woman.) Eventually I started noticing something.
This was an upper class, so there was lots of free discussion and language practice. The teacher would give us a printout of a news item or op-ed and after we'd read and reviewed it, invite our thoughts. The westerners would jump on the topic like a soccer ball and kick it around for a bit- and I'd be one of the first to jump, having learned the age-old lesson that what a woman feels is the proper pause between question and answer is twice what a guy is comfortable with, and it's either talk before you're psychically ready or don't get a chance to talk at all. When we'd all stated our views there'd be a pause. Then the older Korean man would speak. Then the younger Korean man. Then the Korean woman.
Whatever you may think about this in theory, in practice I slowly started to feel that us 'My Opinions: Let Me Show You Them' westerners were acting like children, and that adults wait before waving their thoughts about. So I started waiting before talking. I can't tell you how hard that was. It really is counter to everything I'd picked up here. It got worse, actually, with various Japanese and Korean and Chinese friends, when it began to sink in that with them, opinions aren't an automatic response to a phenomenon, and that even should you have one it's bad manners to go shoving it at any but intimates. My students once complained- 'The teacher we had before kept asking us what we *think* about things, and then she made us say what we thought. It's so difficult!' All I could say was, that's how American culture at least works. Opinions are a reflex: whatever it is, we must have a reaction to it. And some of us must express that reaction or burst.
I've always admired the kind of person who doesn't see the need to speak their mind on any subject at the drop of a hat, for the same reason I admire people who can draw: because I can't.
Ic tō sāþe wāt
þæt biþ in eorle indryhten þeaw,
þæt hē his ferðlocan fæste binde,
healde his hordcofan, hycge swā hē wille.
(Google for a translation if you need one: all I can find are PDFs. Friends don't make friends read PDFs.) Yeah, well: nice trick if you can do it. Practice, I suppose, is the way to start: just keep silent. Say nothing. Possibly then there may come the master-level when it stops being a necessity to have an opinion about anything at all: bliss I can scarce conceive of.
This was an upper class, so there was lots of free discussion and language practice. The teacher would give us a printout of a news item or op-ed and after we'd read and reviewed it, invite our thoughts. The westerners would jump on the topic like a soccer ball and kick it around for a bit- and I'd be one of the first to jump, having learned the age-old lesson that what a woman feels is the proper pause between question and answer is twice what a guy is comfortable with, and it's either talk before you're psychically ready or don't get a chance to talk at all. When we'd all stated our views there'd be a pause. Then the older Korean man would speak. Then the younger Korean man. Then the Korean woman.
Whatever you may think about this in theory, in practice I slowly started to feel that us 'My Opinions: Let Me Show You Them' westerners were acting like children, and that adults wait before waving their thoughts about. So I started waiting before talking. I can't tell you how hard that was. It really is counter to everything I'd picked up here. It got worse, actually, with various Japanese and Korean and Chinese friends, when it began to sink in that with them, opinions aren't an automatic response to a phenomenon, and that even should you have one it's bad manners to go shoving it at any but intimates. My students once complained- 'The teacher we had before kept asking us what we *think* about things, and then she made us say what we thought. It's so difficult!' All I could say was, that's how American culture at least works. Opinions are a reflex: whatever it is, we must have a reaction to it. And some of us must express that reaction or burst.
I've always admired the kind of person who doesn't see the need to speak their mind on any subject at the drop of a hat, for the same reason I admire people who can draw: because I can't.
Ic tō sāþe wāt
þæt biþ in eorle indryhten þeaw,
þæt hē his ferðlocan fæste binde,
healde his hordcofan, hycge swā hē wille.
(Google for a translation if you need one: all I can find are PDFs. Friends don't make friends read PDFs.) Yeah, well: nice trick if you can do it. Practice, I suppose, is the way to start: just keep silent. Say nothing. Possibly then there may come the master-level when it stops being a necessity to have an opinion about anything at all: bliss I can scarce conceive of.
no subject
(she says, giving her opinion)
no subject
You clearly didn't read English at university. Well, neither did I, much, but I hung out pretty exclusively with English majors, and they taught me the fine art of presenting an opinion based on no knowledge whatsoever aka BSing. I suppose it was a useful skill at one point, but ultimately it tells on you.
no subject
My mother read Philosophy at Cambridge. I have learned never to give an opinion _unless_ I am prepared to back it up. I've also learned to hate discussions/arguments at the dinner table, but that's a different problem.
no subject
I'm told Maths these days allows for airy speculation and wiggle room, but aside from engineering, I can't think of a more feet on the floor discipline than Stats.
Philosophers OTOH... (deep sigh, thinks of sister-in-law.) They argue for argument's sake, and they do it with all the tools of logic. Rhetoric (the staple of the English major) never goes anywhere with them. Which is frustrating. Surely style counts for *something*?
no subject
On the other hand, my mother used to regularly raid my fantasy bookshelves, and there were Significant Discussions about exactly which books were going where when I left home, and it was her that started me on Tolkien, so . . . who knows? :)
no subject
They're right; I know they're right; substance must top style and style alone shouldn't be allowed to carry the day. OTOH my French ancestors' blood cries out in me that they're wrong wrong wrong and it CAN and SHOULD and DOES.
Yes, but even logicians can like Tolkien. Philosophy from the start had the goal of making you a better *human being*; and somehow over the centuries philosophy became unco-optable by crass considerations/ business schools, so it still does.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(She did actually like the bit of Utena I once showed her, but was not enthusiastic about watching all 39 episodes, so I didn't press the point . . .)
no subject
(I still do not tell people what I think. Except on Livejournal where I assume that everyone whose opinion is worth caring about agrees with me in every particular.)
I am so embarrassed that I remember reading that passage in Old English class and couldn't make sense of it till I googled...
no subject
That's true. Then again, I'm not sure it's true for everybody; but for those most sympathetic to Canadian and Japanese cultural emphasis on group consensus and harmony... yeah, it's true.
I'm embarrassed that after thirty years I remember as much of the poem as I do. IMO it walks a very fine line beween art and emo, kind of like Hamlet's down in the dumpery. *Real* adults prefer Lear and The Seafarer, I'm told.
no subject
no subject
That's English?!
If you mean Ic tō sāþe wāt, that's English's Cro-magnon forebear, some Anglo-Saxon dialect in... Essex? Anglia? middle of the island somewhere? The Wanderer. Lovely poem. 'I know it to be truth that a noble man will have this noble custom, that he binds fast his heart's house, guards the treasure (of his thoughts), and thinks what he will.' Leave out the A-S words and there are plenty of translations (http://research.uvsc.edu/mcdonald/wanderweb/).
no subject
no subject
I am a sad case, though. I always have an opinion on something. It's just that when I was younger I lacked the courage to shove my opinions down other people's throats. Now that I am older, I know that I have to do unto others before they do unto me.
no subject
no subject